This nation is already in crisis over government in partnership with business. Govt must retain over sight controls and authority to investigatie and bring to justice any crimes or civil wrongs committed. This has not been going on for several years especially at HHS and other agencies and one reason most think " governemnt is not working" for IT ISN'T WORKING FOR ITS NOT, Few have any idea what is gong on inside the partners of the govt and Congress never seems to ask them to testify who can really answer the questions. Our very lives have been adversely affected in many ways. Business can help out, advise, and be fairly compensated, but we have come close to some international cabals overthrowing the govt and become the ones in control and its not working out too well. Of course the health insurace exchange has had crashes and porblems for there are too many illegal offline systems being used inside the partners of the govt now and for over a decade and no one at HHS has been allowed to investigate although we presented the evidence of horrendous illegal things and thefts going on by some of the partners. Its still going on and more money is being thrown at the problem instead of doing the criminal investigations and shutting down what one Ast US attorney called the biggest ricco case in the history of USA and they could do nothing as there was no Federal law enforccment to investigate and refer anyone for prosecution. This was verified many times over including with the person assigned in the US Justice dept. as Congress had their 'hands tied' with no money to spend to shut down real crimes. Yet, nothing is done and Congress does not make sure real oversite is done as there have not been real internal audit controls for 20 years when the main enforcement laws were suspended back in 1994. and the same partners are running agency after agency now and at the state and local areas. too. Ethical companies find it much harder to compete in such a corrupted climate and the taxpayers precious monies is gone and the items it was to be used for? PARTNERSHIPS DO NOT WORK. GOVT CONTRACTS WITH OVERSITE AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ACTIONS HAVE A PURPOSE. Linda Joy Adams

In the article, Hillary said, "...the rules, the procurement rules, the technology rules ... make it very difficult" to proceed with technology. So, did IT just skirt these issues? Did the government have to make changes to policy to accomodate technology? How did they deal with the issues?

@ Li Tan. What I wanted to hear from hilary more was her policies in helping decrease youth unemployment through technology. As you pointed out, technology is the future of the country. If we could train future workers in improving their skills on technology they will be more marketable to employers.

I think we all saw how woefully unprepared our government is to take on large scale IT projects but did we really expect anything different? Will we get true competitive private sector bidding or will we get the wink and a nod bidding and a friend of a congressman will get rich not delivering what they promised? I think it needs to be more than the technology partnership that gets privatized. I think they need some privatized management since the government seems to move at a very different pace than the private sector and they seem to need a bit more accountability that you can't get when it benefits government employees to hide issues.

That's the point - there should be more cooperation between public sector and private ones so that their IT project will not fail. Furthermore, it's good and important that senior political leaders have more insight to high-tech end. This is essential for the future growth of the country.

I think the article was very informative. Some of her views on tech seem follow current technology trends. I do agree with her that we need to increase the partnership between government and the private sector. As the healthcare.gov website demonstrated, the public sector needs to work on getting their IT projects not to fail.

Yeah, I thought she brushed that one off a bit too easily. Again, as David and I were discussing in this thread-- a talking point that distills a complicated issue into a deceptively confident statement. I thought it was kind of funny that she said "so far as 'we' know." As the former Secretary of State, I suspect she knows a few more details about this than "we" the public do.

>"Hillary can't control my careless tweets, let alone what a real political enemy will do with her words."

Indeed-- and that spins off into a whole different world of political aggravation. The presence of PR pros (whether Hillary's allies or enemies) who try to manipulate these talking points speaks to the vested interest some parties have in conditioning people to continue to rely on talking points-- hence our increasingly divisive culture, and the "echo chamber" ideology that's developed in both right-focused and left-focused media channels. This in turn speaks to the influence of money in the overall process-- who writes the talking points, what gets distilled, what gets excluded, who gets targeted with messaging and why, what transparency the public has into the process, and so on. On the flip side, I think the recent voting record shows that some constituencies have rebelled against politicians and donors who backed talking points that turned out to be lies. I'm not convinced this sort of populist discontent amounts to a corrective measure, but it reminds you that hollow talking points have a shelf life, and often end up canceling out one another.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.